Eastbourne.

Eastbourne is a single-town coastal seat on the East Sussex shore, dominated almost entirely by the town that gives it its name. The built-up area of Eastbourne accounts for roughly 97,000 residents, some 95 per cent of a constituency of about 101,700, with only a thin scatter of rural and dispersed settlement and the small Crumbles district beyond it. The population is older than the national profile, with a median age of 45, overwhelmingly white at nine in ten residents, and rather less likely than the country at large to hold a degree. Local services across the seat's nine wards fall to a single body, Eastbourne, a district authority that shares staff and a chief executive with neighbouring Lewes.

The town's politics have tilted steadily towards the Liberal Democrats. Across the 23 most recent ward contests the party took 15 to the Conservatives' eight, holding seats such as Old Town, Langney and Upperton while the Conservatives retained the wealthier southern wards of Meads, Ratton and Sovereign. That municipal pattern was mirrored at Westminster: in 2024 the Liberal Democrats won the seat on 52.1 per cent, well clear of the Conservatives on 25.3, a decisive reversal of the narrow Conservative win of 2019. The sitting member, Josh Babarinde, returned at that election, is one product of this shift rather than its author.

On the figures available the seat now leans clearly to the Liberal Democrats, both locally and nationally, though the Conservatives retain a base in the more affluent wards. Recent local coverage has had a broadly administrative tenor, turning on planning consultation, housing delivery and council services rather than controversy, and the constituency keeps a low national profile. Crime is the one figure that stands out: shoplifting appears to run well above the comparable average, with anti-social behaviour, public order offences and drug crime also elevated, patterns consistent with a busy seafront town. The seat looks settled for now, but a single-authority town can move quickly when its mood turns.